


Sherlollipops - Hidden Truth 2: Overly Complicated

by MizJoely



Series: 221 Sherlollipops [146]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Original Hooper-Holmes Child - Freeform, Parentlock, Post Reichenbach AU, Sherlolly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 10:38:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6235318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizJoely/pseuds/MizJoely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a review for "Hidden Truth" on ff.net, Cm100 said: Wait... how is Molly's brother-in-law her fake fiance and the fake father with her sister?</p><p>This is my answer to that very excellent question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherlollipops - Hidden Truth 2: Overly Complicated

It wasn’t until they were in Molly’s car, less than fifteen minutes into their two-hour drive to her sister’s house in Bournemouth, that Sherlock broached the one subject she’d really hoped he wouldn’t.

“Pretending that your brother-in-law was your fiancé. Seems a bit…over-complicated.”

“Hmm,” Molly replied, trying for noncommittal and praying he’d drop it. She pretended to be far more focused on the traffic than she needed to be, hoping to give off the impression she was a nervous driver and that he shouldn’t talk to her while she was behind the wheel.

“Molly, you’re a steady and able driver well used to both city traffic and the lunatics who frequent the M6. I can tell you’re just trying to avoid answering me.”

“You haven’t asked anything, so how can I be trying to avoid answering anything?” she shot back, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead, but inwardly cursing his perspicacity. She should have known that even a two years’ absence wouldn’t stop him properly deducing her. Even during such an emotionally fraught situation such as they currently faced; couldn’t he just focus on meeting his fifteen-month-old daughter for the first time instead of on the how’s and why’s of the actions Molly had taken to protect her in his absence?

Apparently not. “Molly. Why did you feel the need to have your brother-in-law act as your fake fiancé? Especially since he and your sister were already pretending to be Marion’s parents?”

Molly sighed. “Fine, if you must know, it wasn’t my idea. It just sort of…happened.”

His silence was eloquent; Molly could practically hear the skepticism. She sighed again and changed lanes, overtaking a lumbering panel van of the sort meant for light removals with a sort of evil hippo painted on the side. “You’ve got to promise me not to say anything mean or make fun.”

“Why would I…oh!” Sherlock exclaimed. Molly glanced briefly at him, seeing his eyes widen in sudden understanding. “Your brother-in-law’s something of an idiot, is he?”

“He’s a lovely man,” Molly defended him as she returned to the slower traffic lane. “It’s not his fault he panicked when Mike asked me who my visitor was. I mean, Mike knows I have a sister, I’ve mentioned her before, but Tom, well, he blurted out that he…”

“…was your fiancé,” Sherlock finished for her with a chuckle. “And you went along with it because you felt bad for him.”

“Poor Tom,” Molly sighed. “He honestly thought he was helping. I’d told Mike that my sister and brother-in-law were expecting, and that he was going to be out of the country on business and wouldn’t be there for the birth, so I was Lynne’s birthing coach. But Tom thought I’d said he was _already_ out of the country, whereas if he’d just kept shut it would have been fine.”

“Thus you suddenly acquired a fiancé that no one in London had met or heard of, and Mike is a bit of a gossip so you couldn’t just let it quietly die out,” Sherlock concluded with another chuckle. “Honestly, Molly, what does your sister see in this buffoon?”

“Not a buffoon,” Molly corrected him testily. “Not everyone can be a deductive genius. He and my sister are very happy; they have a dog and they have dinner with his parents and meet up with their friends at the pub on Fridays. He plays football and…”

“And is so boring he makes your brain hurt,” Sherlock said firmly. “Until you discovered you were pregnant, you would make excuses as to why you couldn’t visit them because you couldn’t stand how humdrum their life was. How ordinary.”

“Well, yes,” Molly admitted. “A bit. But it’s the perfect life for a young child; I had no intention of subjecting Marion to any sort of gossip or newspaper speculation about who her father might be. Certainly not after my name came up in an article about the St. Barts staff whom you were friendly with!”

“Point taken,” Sherlock conceded. He was thumbing through the hundreds of photos on her phone again, and the rest of the drive was spent with him asking questions and making deductions, and Molly either answering them or confirming them. In between she told stories about Marion’s first word – mama – and how she’d started walking at nine months and already knew her alphabet. “But then, any child of yours was bound to be precocious,” Molly said with a laugh.

“No, any child of _ours_ was,” Sherlock corrected her. “Don’t devalue your own importance in her development, Molly. I certainly don’t.”

Molly smiled and reached over to take his hand, squeezing it affectionately. “You’re going to be a brilliant father, Sherlock, whenever you’re ready. As soon as you think it’s safe, we’ll bring her back to London.”

“Certainly not.” Sherlock sounded affronted, and Molly’s smile turned into a frown, her heart constricting in her chest. She’d thought when he’d asked to meet Marion that he intended to be a part of her life, that he meant for the three of them to be a family, but she hadn’t actually asked him if that was the case. Was this his way of telling her he had no such desire?

“We’ll find a place near your sister’s house. Not too close, I doubt if I could stand every Sunday listening to the pair of them nattering on about the neighbors and football, but close enough that Marion can still visit them frequently. At least until she’s older. They’re the only home she’s known for almost two years, it would be criminal to uproot her so completely. Besides,” he added with a gloating tone in his voice, “Mycroft won’t be tempted to visit quite so often if we’re not so close at hand. My parents, however, will doubtless be over every other day.” He let out a put-upon sigh. “I suppose I can live with that, and I know they’ll love you and you’ll love them.”

He made that sound like more of a complaint than a compliment, but Molly was used to him nattering on about his parents and their love of country line dancing and gardening. “But what about my job? What about your work?”

“You can commute, and your sister can continue to watch Marion when we’re both in London. Once Marion is ready for school we’ll move back to London full-time. If she continues to develop her cognitive skills as she has been, I’d say it’ll be two years at most. Yes, two years. We can manage that.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” Molly said faintly.

“Contingent on Marion – and your willingness to work a reduced schedule. That won’t be an issue, will it?”

“And get to spend more time with my daughter and you? Not an issue at all,” Molly assured him. Her smile was firmly in place now, her heart full to bursting. She could hardly wait for Sherlock and Marion to meet face-to-face; she was a friendly, cheerful little mite and she just knew she’d take to her father like a duck to water.

And so it proved; Marion was more than happy to see Aunt Mowwy and the man she would know as Unca Lock until she was old enough to understand who everyone actually was in her newly expanded family. Within a month Sherlock and Molly found a cottage roughly half-way between Bournemouth and London, which came with a set of beehives at the far end of the property that had Sherlock immediately learning all he could about apiary. Marion was his apt and attentive pupil, and Molly often watched through the kitchen window as the two of them, properly done up in protective gear and mesh hats, tended to the hives.

It wasn’t the life either of them had anticipated – but it was a life neither would have traded for the world.


End file.
